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About:

This blog is predominately about camera trapping in California. We camera trap to save our souls and to teach primary school students about biology and conservation. We will also touch on other camera trapping news and musings, sets from afar, mediocre herpetology, sucky birding, and other natural history discussions.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

It is raining here in Santa Cruz so the camera is going to stay out for a few more days, but rain means it is amphibian season. I have a couple of Pacific tree frogs, Pseudacris regilla, singing in my very urban backyard and flipping hide spots revealed quite a few Slender Salamanders, Batrachoseps gavilanensis. So a non-camera trap Ensatina photo while we wait for the rain to slow and see if we got anything on the first set.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Put my first camera out today (10/17/10) on campus. I will leave it up for about two weeks and then pull it down. I will be moving my camera around a bit to keep the hippies from finding it and stealing it even if it means missing out on some of those species that don't like to visit the your trap until a month after it is set. The camera I have up now is a ScoutGuard. I still need to buy yeti boards and have RandomTruth help me hack some Sony S600s.

I scouted locations for a couple of weeks and ran into a coyote, well almost ran into. I came up over a ridge and we were about 10 feet from each other by the time either of us realized the other was there. I was not quick enough to get my DSLR up and photograph it. It bailed quickly down the hill. I tried circling around the ridge hoping to pop out at the top of the ridge and cut it off. Almost made it, but there was a creek with steep banks that I was not expecting separating us. Fired off a couple of long distance shots in very low light. You can almost tell it is a coyote.